I looked out at the sea.
"I haven't given him any other impression about myself than what I am," I said.
"Well then, either he's accepted that or he's deluding himself into believing he can change you," Nelson said. I smiled without turning back to him.
"You don't think I can change?"
"No. Actually, I'm not sure I'd want you to change," he said and held his eyes on me when I turned to him again.
I wanted to say I had thought he was coming back here to see me after he had come to dinner with his family that night to pursue me and not to have a dirty little assignation with Belinda in our boathouse. I wanted to say I thought he was a better man than that, but I didn't. I simply bit my lower lip and swallowed back my regrets and disappointments like so much stomach acid.
"Your father's lucky to have a daughter like you, especially now," he continued. "You're going to hold your family together. You're a strong person."
"Too strong for you?" I dared ask.
He smiled.
"No. I'm too frivolous a person for you. We would probably end up killing each other," he joked.
"Yes," I said, cloaking my disappointment in a smile. He took another sip of his bourbon.
"Can I get you anything?"
"No. I'm coming back in," I said. "I just had to get a breath of fresh air. All those people . , ."
"Yes," he said nodding as if he understood, as if he could ever understand. "Well, I'll be inside," he added, reached out to touch my hand and then turned and entered the house.
I stood there trying to swallow. I felt as if the air around me had turned to ice. A few hundred yards to my right, Belinda's dead fetus lay planted like some seed of deformity, a sin pressed down into the darkness in a vain attempt to keep it forgotten. Belinda was capable of forgetting. That was her strength. She could wipe away her yesterdays like she wiped the chalk board at school and start again.
I couldn't. Everything that happened and everything I did and thought was indelibly written on the surface of my heart. It was an organ covered with scratches and small tears already. The biggest tear came with the realization that Nelson Childs was never to be mine.
Desire was cruel. We should want only the things we can have, I thought; otherwise, longing becomes pain and pain turns us into creatures of dissatisfaction, sitting with arthritic, curled fingers, scowling at the horizon, furious at the sun for rising and bringing us another day of disappointment.
"There you are!" Samuel cried. "Nelson told me you were out here. My poor Olivia," he said
sauntering over to embrace me. I smelled the odor of whiskey and onions on his breath and my stomach churned. "You shouldn't be alone at a time like this, Olivia."
"You can only be alone at a time like this," I replied.
"I'll make it up to you, Olivia. I'll work like a dog to make you happy again. I'll start tomorrow. I'll dig the first shovelful for our foundation first thing. I'll . ."
"Let's go inside, Samuel," I said sharply. "It's getting colder."
"What? Oh, yes. Of course."
He kept his arm around me clumsily as we approached the door and then I stepped forward and his arm slipped away.
Just like Mother's hand, leaving me alone to face what was to come.
10
The Bride No One Would
Have Believed
.
During the days that followed Mother's funeral,